http://www.thinfilmmfg.com/blog/tfm/ Thin films, writing, small business, and random web flotsam en Copyright 2010 Fri, 05 Mar 2010 12:07:54 -0800 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Recently I've had a spate of comments making innocuous but generic and not terribly relevant remarks, from people with names or web sites pointing to stock promoters, Viagra sales, and so forth. I've been deleting these as spam. If you are a real person and your comment has been deleted in this way, I apologize. Make a substantive comment under an actual human name (ideally, but not necessarily, your own), and point to a link that is even remotely relevant, and your comment will get through. Behave like a spammer, and be treated like one. http://www.thinfilmmfg.com/blog/tfm/2010/03/a_note_about_comments.html http://www.thinfilmmfg.com/blog/tfm/2010/03/a_note_about_comments.html admin Fri, 05 Mar 2010 12:07:54 -0800 last week's post on energy policy, I skipped over the effect of manufacturing efficiencies. If an information-intensive technology can be manufactured in a way that reaps large economies of scale, then the know-how used to create it can still be very cheap on a per unit basis. Exhibit A for this effect is the integrated circuit industry. Each individual transistor is a small masterpiece of engineering. The intellectual property contained in a few square inches of silicon is enormous, but the industry spreads out the cost by making billions of them. Thin film solar manufacturers believe that manufacturing efficiency will allow them to reach a competitive price point. That would be very good news for me, my clients, and the world as a whole. But still not necessarily for job creation. The disconnect between information content and job creation is explored in more detail in this recent post at fivethirtyeight.com, analyzing the decline of manufacturing jobs in the US economy. It isn't due to "evil corporations shipping American manufacturing overseas." Until the start of the recent recession, US manufacturing output was at an all time high. Rather, it's due to massive improvements in productivity, which in this context means replacing humans with automation of various kinds. If solar becomes cost competitive it will be through massive productivity improvements, achieved in part by automating every step that can be automated. Still, merely looking at the need for productivity improvements does undervalue the job creation opportunity. Even if the number of jobs per GW goes down -- which I think is not only likely, but necessary -- the total number of jobs will still go up as the market size increases. The current world solar market is about 6 GW per year, but the world's total electricity consumption is in excess of 17 trillion kWh. That's a whole lot of room for growth. Unfortunately, that also leaves us back where we started. Promoting use of a product through subsidies is not usually a good way to make the manufacturing of that product more efficient. The government can improve manufacturing -- for example by investing in research and development through organizations like NIST and NREL -- or it can create jobs, but it isn't really good at doing both at once. Disclaimer: Though my past and present clients may like this post better, my opinions are still mine alone. ]]> http://www.thinfilmmfg.com/blog/tfm/2010/02/more_about_jobs_and_energy_pol.html http://www.thinfilmmfg.com/blog/tfm/2010/02/more_about_jobs_and_energy_pol.html business energy solar Sun, 28 Feb 2010 23:32:14 -0800 points out, the two goals don't necessarily have much to do with each other. Thin film solar technology, for example, contains a lot of intellectual property. Lots of engineering expertise is required to build the deposition systems, optimize the processes, and keep the whole operation running. Add the skilled electricians who actually build solar farms and connect them to the grid, and you get a lot of high-skill jobs. You also get electricity that is substantially more expensive than that generated by plain old boring low-tech fossil fuel plants. But if your goal is to reduce the world's (or America's) consumption of fossil fuels and generation of greenhouse gases, whatever alternative technology you pick needs to be as inexpensive as possible. Ideally, it should be simple enough for illiterate subsistence farmers to implement using locally available materials, perhaps with guidance from a handful of engineers. Not that there's anything wrong with green jobs. I have one myself, since most of my current clients are in the solar space. And certainly the emergence of a renewable energy sector will benefit the communities where those jobs reside. But the assumption that clean energy will both prevent climate change and revitalize the US manufacturing sector doesn't stand up to close examination. Energy is a commodity product, and as such will always tend to migrate to the lowest cost technologies and least expensive producers. The fewer high-skill manufacturing jobs an energy technology requires, the more likely it is to actually succeed in shifting the world's energy mix. Disclaimer: My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent the views of any particular past or present client. ]]> http://www.thinfilmmfg.com/blog/tfm/2010/02/for_best_policy_first_define_t.html http://www.thinfilmmfg.com/blog/tfm/2010/02/for_best_policy_first_define_t.html business energy solar Mon, 22 Feb 2010 15:28:09 -0800 booked more than a billion dollars in orders in January, for the first time since May, 2008. Though still a pretty weak number in historical terms, that probably does mean people are buying actual equipment, as opposed to consumables, service contracts, and so forth. (In the depths of the recession, people joked that even a single package of O-rings would be enough to move the book-to-bill number.) Equipment purchases are good news for a couple of reasons. First, they usually mean that the purchasing fab is running at 80-90% of capacity and the demand outlook is positive. Second, they mean that the customer is able to get financing on terms it considers reasonable. ]]> http://www.thinfilmmfg.com/blog/tfm/2010/02/let_the_good_times_roll.html http://www.thinfilmmfg.com/blog/tfm/2010/02/let_the_good_times_roll.html business semiconductors Thu, 18 Feb 2010 17:52:39 -0800 my post on the Dubai World debt restructuring. A spokesman for Dubai Silicon Oasis says that DSO is not part of Dubai World and will not be directly affected. The indirect effects are anyone's guess. ]]> http://www.thinfilmmfg.com/blog/tfm/2009/12/dubai_update.html http://www.thinfilmmfg.com/blog/tfm/2009/12/dubai_update.html business semiconductors Wed, 09 Dec 2009 12:10:18 -0800 Associated Press. What I want to know is why anyone was surprised by this. The history of the internet -- the history of computing -- tells us that if you make access easier, people will do more of it. And now AT&T is shocked, simply shocked, that people are actually using all those bandwidth intensive links that Apple so helpfully provides. Of course AT&T's dilemma is real. They need to improve service, and the money to do that has to come from somewhere. But capping usage seems like such a late-1990s way to go about it. Given the bandwidth demands of the Apple Store, I wonder what Apple will have to say about this. (Link by way of the Atlantic business channel.) ]]> http://www.thinfilmmfg.com/blog/tfm/2009/12/be_careful_what_you_wish_for_1.html http://www.thinfilmmfg.com/blog/tfm/2009/12/be_careful_what_you_wish_for_1.html business internet Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:42:25 -0800 Advanced Technology Investment Company launched GlobalFoundries, a joint venture with AMD, earlier this year. Earlier this month, it agreed to purchase Chartered Semiconductor, thereby becoming a major player in the foundry market. ATIC is owned by the government of Abu Dhabi, and has said it plans to build manufacturing facilities in Dubai Silicon Oasis. Meanwhile, Dubai World, the Dubai government's largest investment vehicle, recently announced it would seek a six-month hold on debt payments as part of a restructuring, the same day it raised US$5 billion from Abu Dhabi banks. Both Dubai and Abu Dhabi are part of the United Arab Emirates, and the federal UAE government is under pressure to provide more support for Dubai World, which it may or may not do. The UAE has been hit hard by declines in the price of oil. More generally, the global economic downturn has put a lot of pressure on government finances around the world, and the Dubai World restructuring shows that support for underperforming investments can't be assumed. (Best coverage of the Dubai World restructuring is at the Wall Street Journal. Subscription required.) I don't know how the problems at Dubai World will affect ATIC or, for that matter, Dubai Silicon Oasis. I've sent out some queries, but don't expect a response over the weekend. The situation definitely bears watching, though. The semiconductor industry rewards patient capital, but global conditions are making patience difficult. ]]> http://www.thinfilmmfg.com/blog/tfm/2009/11/yes_the_middle_east_matters_to.html http://www.thinfilmmfg.com/blog/tfm/2009/11/yes_the_middle_east_matters_to.html business semiconductors Sat, 28 Nov 2009 11:18:44 -0800 broken down the recently released proposal on financial regulation and systemic risk. How do regulators deal with institutions that are too big too fail? Indiviglio's analysis is long -- I've linked to the last of eight parts, which summarizes -- but readable for those of us who aren't economic policy wonks. At the same time, I can't help but think of an old story in which an adventurer complains that he knows all about zombies now, so of course it won't be zombies that attack him next time. Booms and busts appear to be inherent in markets, dating back at least to the 17th century Dutch tulip mania. The desire to build bigger and bigger institutions and accumulate more and more assets is as old as humanity. Any regulatory scheme that preserves the essential dynamism of markets is likely to contain the seeds of its own failure. The critical question may not be whether it will work, but what will contain the damage when it fails. ]]> http://www.thinfilmmfg.com/blog/tfm/2009/10/it_wont_be_zombies_next_time.html http://www.thinfilmmfg.com/blog/tfm/2009/10/it_wont_be_zombies_next_time.html business economics Thu, 29 Oct 2009 22:15:03 -0800 this, in which incompetent customer service confronts the power of Twitter, and loses, big time. (Sleep-deprived new parent rant. Contains shouting, some bad language, and references to baby poo.) Full disclosure: I have occasionally played the journalist card myself. But it's always a last resort. Like many such weapons, it loses effectiveness if used too often. ]]> http://www.thinfilmmfg.com/blog/tfm/2009/08/be_your_own_customer_service_a.html http://www.thinfilmmfg.com/blog/tfm/2009/08/be_your_own_customer_service_a.html business internet Mon, 31 Aug 2009 12:07:03 -0800

Most efficient solar cell: a five-junction concentrator device from the University of New South Wales. 43% efficient.

Most efficient triple-junction cell: a concentrator cell from SpectroLab. 41.6% efficient.

Most efficient screen-printed monocrystalline silicon production cell: more than 18% efficient, from Suniva. The "screen-printed" qualifier is important, as SunPower's non-screen-printed production cells top 20%.

Most efficient multicrystalline silicon panels: 15.6% efficiency, achieved by Suntech Power. Though this is a lower number than the other records, it's actually pretty interesting. It's for a complete panel, not a cell, and beats Sandia's longstanding record.

Update: But wait, there's more! I missed this one...

• Most efficient flexible CdTe cell. 12.4%, achieved by a group in Switzerland. This one is important because it uses a low temperature process, compatible with roll-to-roll processing.

]]> http://www.thinfilmmfg.com/blog/tfm/2009/08/enough_records_to_go_around.html http://www.thinfilmmfg.com/blog/tfm/2009/08/enough_records_to_go_around.html solar Wed, 26 Aug 2009 14:26:23 -0800 recent work at IBM. So far they're still working on the DNA scaffold, but the potential is very cool. ]]> http://www.thinfilmmfg.com/blog/tfm/2009/08/two_great_buzzwords_that_work.html http://www.thinfilmmfg.com/blog/tfm/2009/08/two_great_buzzwords_that_work.html nanotubes semiconductors Tue, 18 Aug 2009 15:33:50 -0800 Daily Dish Huffington Post National Iranian-American Council And for video: CitizenTube (Be aware that some of these videos show a great deal of graphic violence.) The best foreign media coverage has been from the BBC. Still, most foreign journalists in Iran have been asked to leave and/or face severe restrictions on their freedom of movement. The above links depend largely on reports and video from citizens in Iran, either submitted by email or posted to sites like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr. (Search for the IranElection tag on any of these sites.) Most of these reports are impossible to confirm. ]]> http://www.thinfilmmfg.com/blog/tfm/2009/06/whats_happening_in_iran.html http://www.thinfilmmfg.com/blog/tfm/2009/06/whats_happening_in_iran.html civil liberties politics Sun, 21 Jun 2009 09:49:24 -0800 main justifications for the Iraq War. Dick Cheney in particular continued to point to those links long after they had been debunked by both the 9/11 Commission and the Pentagon. That's bad enough. But now McClatchy is reporting that the search for proof of such links was one of the major motivations for the torture of "high value" detainees. Let that sink in for a minute. Techniques used by Communist regimes to extract false confessions were deployed by American interrogators searching for evidence of a conspiracy that didn't actually exist. The Bush regime sacrificed the rule of law and 200 years of hard-earned American moral authority in order to achieve their own political goals. (And incidentally, that last link is truly scary stuff. Katrina-level incompetence applied to interrogation policy.) ]]> http://www.thinfilmmfg.com/blog/tfm/2009/04/time_for_a_truth_commission.html http://www.thinfilmmfg.com/blog/tfm/2009/04/time_for_a_truth_commission.html politics Wed, 22 Apr 2009 09:13:50 -0800 they're pretty ugly. Both bookings and billings are below the levels reached in the depths of the dot-com meltdown, which was itself a historic downturn for the IC industry. Worse, the ratio has not been above one since January 2007 (although it lingered in the upper 0.90s until May). The two years of the 2000-2002 downturn seemed like an eternity, and this one clearly isn't over yet. The good news, if you can call it that, is that bookings seem to have stabilized, although at painfully low levels. I'm not going to call a bottom just yet, but I'm hearing hints of optimism rather than the unmitigated doom of a few months back. The other good news is that the rise of consumer electronics in the last few years probably means a faster bounce off the bottom, at least for IC volume. It takes a lot less to get people to buy hundred-dollar gadgets than thousand-dollar computers. Of course the gadgets bring in less revenue, too. ]]> http://www.thinfilmmfg.com/blog/tfm/2009/04/yes_it_really_is_that_bad.html http://www.thinfilmmfg.com/blog/tfm/2009/04/yes_it_really_is_that_bad.html business semiconductors Tue, 21 Apr 2009 16:58:47 -0800 his view of the proposed 450-mm wafer transition is pretty accurate. The switch to 300-mm wafers was great for the chip companies, not so great for the equipment companies. So there are likely to be some tough negotiations about development funding and equipment purchase commitments before 450-mm equipment moves forward. The bottom line, though, is that fighting with your customers is never a winning strategy. If big customers like Intel and Samsung are determined to build 450-mm fabs, the equipment companies who help them do it will be more successful than those who can't or won't. ]]> http://www.thinfilmmfg.com/blog/tfm/2009/04/the_customer_is_always_right_4.html http://www.thinfilmmfg.com/blog/tfm/2009/04/the_customer_is_always_right_4.html semiconductors Mon, 20 Apr 2009 14:50:13 -0800